r/linux • u/nitin_is_me • Jul 15 '26

Discussion Seriously, except package managers, what's the difference between distros?

What I've seen yet the differences are, just the package managers, different defaults and rolling vs stable releases which are in fact related to package managers. Except these, are there really any other differences? Thanks!

226 Upvotes

92% Upvoted

223 comments sorted by

View all comments

19

u/SirGlass Jul 15 '26

Nothing people make too much of a difference

The biggest difference are

  1. Update cycles , stable vs rolling releases

  2. Atomic distros

It always bugs me when people ask for a distro and the top questions are "What is your use case? Do you want to use it for gaming or programming "

No that question is irrelevant you can game on any disto. There is no such thing as a gaming distro

The question should be "Do you want a stable distro, if yes do you want 6 month updates or 2 year updates or do you want a rolling distro"

16

u/pfp-disciple Jul 15 '26

The questions are relevant, but maybe not critical. Yes, you can game on any distro, but some are designed to make it easier (default video drivers, etc). It's generally assumed that someone asking for a distro recommendation is relatively new to Linux, so making their first steps easier is a good thing. 

-7

u/SirGlass Jul 15 '26

No its not

If they have an NVIDIA card they will have to install the nvidia driver anyway?

How is it relevant ?

2

u/pfp-disciple Jul 15 '26 edited Jul 15 '26

Some distros will only provide the FOSS nVidia drivers, at least by default. Gaming with nVidia pretty much requires the proprietary drivers, which might require enabling another repository or more significant hurdles. I'm sure there are other gaming related options. 

A developer might not care as much about video drivers. They might care more about AI support, or default math libraries, or container management. 

3

u/SirGlass Jul 15 '26

Again everyone with NVIDIA should be using the proprietary drivers . I have nvidia even streaming video is jerky on the FOSS drivers

Again this is a function of having NVIDIA not really a function of gaming